LightWorks: We are all stars

This cross disciplinary project will cumulate in August 2015. It involves a series of curated light based performances at night on the edge of the sea in areas affected by the 2011 Tsunami. It includes sound, voice and movement elements derived from the experiences and recollections of local people. It has been developed as a collaboration between Chris Wainwright, a photographer, performance artist, and curator and Cathy Milliken a musician, composer and director. The project has evolved from their personal research, interventions and engagement with local communities in the Kamaishi area over the past three years.

The resulting work which will be performed with local people with involve sound and voice compositions and performances that are based on systems of communication including, semaphore, morse code and the interpretation of visual material and objects into sound.

One of the lasting recollections told by survivors is just how clear the sky was after the Tsunami with no electricity to pollute the night sky and how bright the starts were. As people looked up to the stars they pondered on the fate of those swept out to sea and how their lives may have been transformed into the stars above. Many people were ‘taken’ by the Tsunami and never found. They remain to this day, in the transitional and restless space between worlds.

‘We Are All Stars’ is a call for collective and individual resilience, a positive way of looking to create a future, built on a strong degree of fatalism and deep spiritual belief and with a recognition that the forces of nature not for the first time in history, have exerted such devastation on the area.

Looking at the stars is not only about projection and dreaming, it is a way of connecting with a future and a past yet to fully unfold.

Chris Wainwright and Cathy Milliken